


An Unthrift Love - Day 3

by Lomedet



Category: Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen, post-play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2010-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomedet/pseuds/Lomedet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica lights candles every Friday night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unthrift Love - Day 3

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anotherusedpage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherusedpage/gifts).



Jessica lights candles every Friday. It isn't hard to hide it from her husband – they are rarely together during the day, after all, and he mostly comes to her late at night, after even the servants are asleep.

She buys candles from the chandler down the street. He never asks why she wants a steady supply of small white votives (although she has the not-quite-a lie always ready - they are meant to go on her personal altar to the Madonna), and she never tells. Her husband is fond of colors and scents, all the things that signify the luxury to which he has become accustomed since their marriage, and if he ever had cause to go into the storeroom, she would eat her (lovely and feathered) hat if he even noticed the white candles in their simple box.

They live, as fate and rent prices would have it, not far from the ghetto. It is close enough for her to hear the bustle of Shabbat - _Sabbath_\- preparation on Friday afternoon, and to imagine that she can smell soup cooking and meat roasting and the warm safe smell of challah in the oven. They eat well, here in the world outside the ghetto, but sometimes she misses the comforts of her childhood.

She puts the candles underneath the Madonna's portrait, and lights a taper from the fire on the hearth. Madonna, she thinks, wondering about the punishment for blaspheming in two religions at once, but saying it anyway because it is like talking to her own mother. If she squints, she can see the dark curls of the woman in the picture hiding under a wimple, her nose curving and eyes darkening and her face softening with love. Madonna, I do this not because I reject your son, but because I had a mother, too. _And a father_, a traitorous voice says within her, _you had a father, once._

She shakes off the memories that clutch at her heart, and begins:  
_Baruch atah adonai, eloheynu melech haolam..._

 


End file.
